Authors: Miles Swarthout
Gillom ordered mint juleps while they listened to the old gent describe this young lady as “emotional and flighty” due to the shape of her small head. Her organ of philoprogenitiveness, which was located in the middle posterior of her skull, just above the occipital spine, he pointed out, was small, and its diminutive size showed that she was not overly fond of children or animals and could be severe when they misbehaved. The woman's concentrativeness, though, was larger, manifesting a power of concentrated application to just one thing. The phrenologist had the young lady turn to the audience as he demonstrated, parting her hair on the crown of her head. She was thusly suited for precise work like bookkeeping in a store. The old boy coaxed the name “Sarah” out of her, and Sarah offered that she was indeed a clerk at the “Merc” and enjoyed working the cash register best. This fact met with mumurings of approbation. But her skull didn't evince the emotional stamina necessary for schoolteaching or raising a large family, he added.
“You are not yet married, correct?” This troubling question caused the unfortunate's face to redden as she teared up, which caused spectators to nod knowingly at the sage's wisdom as the young lady fled the stage crying.
The old blind phrenologist babbled about his expertise in “the living science of studying the shape of the skull to learn what is on one's mind. Phrenology teaches that the mind acts through organization of bodily instrumentalities. And there are, so far as is known, nearly forty mental faculties, each of which has a special and separate function.” He paused to study the crowd with his gaping eye sockets. An older lady was helping him with his act and she had spotted Gillom arriving late to the performance.
“
You,
sir! You in the back, yes, standing at the bar with your girl. We need another young head up here.”
Gillom pointed to himself, surprised.
Me?
“Yessir! We need your help with a reading, please. A free drink for you two, if you will.”
Smiling amiably, Gillom walked past occupied tables to join the elderly couple onstage.
“What's your name, lad?” the old gent asked as he seated Gillom right in front, facing the bar patrons.
“Gillom Rogers.”
“And how do you earn your daily bread?”
“I'm a guard, Bank of Bisbee.”
“You stand watch over all our money.”
Chuckles from the boozy crowd.
“No, I don't touch the money. I make sure our customers get
their money
back and forth safely to our bank.”
After removing Gillom's Stetson, the old man's long, wizened fingers were in his victim's thick blond hair. He rubbed and traced the teenager's scalp like a mind reader.
“You have the head of a mule, young man. Long ears and a long jawline, mulish. I feel a large organ of combativeness, at the posterior of the parietal bone, about an inch and a half upward and back from the external opening of your ear. A continuation of the length of the head from above the ear backward indicates a strong faculty to defend, oppose, and resist. That will make you a good sheriff or newspaper journalist someday when you're finished with this first job. I don't forsee you guarding a bank forever, young man. You have a fairly thick neck, corresponding with a broad base for your brain. We also often find in the fighter a wide, rather straight, and very firm mouth, like yours.”
The old man's thin fingers played over Gillom's face like spider's legs. “The moustache on some of our important military men partially conceals their straight mouth, but it is evident enough in the portraits of Caesar, Wellington, Napoleon, and Ulysses S. Grant, among others. A firm mouth indicates good development of the nasal cavities and especially of the jaws, and the great masticating power which allies such great men to the carnivore, and makes them not averse to blood.”
Anel stopped sipping her julep.
“To sum up, you're not a fast, sleek horse who will readily gallop through life and friends, Gillom, but a steady, mulish plodder whom one can count on being steady in a tight spot. Law enforcement may be your game. That about right, son?”
“No. I'm more racehorse than mule. But I
am
steady in a fight.”
Laughter and a smattering of applause as Gillom sauntered off the stage.
“Get a bull up there to go with that mule!” yelled a drunk from the rear bar. The lady assistant quickly began coaxing a stolid cattleman onstage to cover Gillom's dissatisfaction. Anel and he quickly finished their free drinks, wished good night to the Bank Exchange's gila monster, and breezed outdoors for a long stroll hand-in-hand down Brewery Gulch and up the squeaky wooden stairways to his miner's cottage.
They snuck in quietly and didn't go back outside to enjoy the summer's starry night, for Gillom still wasn't certain Mrs. Blair would permit his entertaining a girlfriend often. They gulped glasses of boiled water from his ceramic jug and undressed quickly without even lighting a lamp, so hungry were they for lovemaking. This time he stayed with her better, climaxing as he matched her rising excitement, so they both collapsed with a final shudder in a tangle of sweaty sheets. Anel panted in the sticky air and Gillom inhaled lying on his back.
“That was better than wrestling,” he grinned.
“Who wres-tle?”
“Oh, that henchman of Luther Goose. He surprised me in the men's room of the Orpheum, night we saw that variety show.”
She squinted in the darkness. “I no remember?”
“He banged me around some before I could even fight back. I didn't have my guns on that night.”
“A good thing, no? No lose you to a
bandido
.”
She could see Gillom's frown in the moonlight. “He in last night, Luther Goose. Say come with heem to thees mining town, north. Have saloon there.”
“He bother you?”
“No, just dance, buy drinks. I need earn money, too, you know.”
“He may promise you more money, Anel, but Luther is a bad man. Red Jean said so. Doesn't treat his saloon girls well.”
“I no go with heem.”
“Clifton's a smaller copper mining town. Rougher, isolated, up in the mountains, north and east of here. Never been there, but that's what I hear.” She saw his eyes slit in the darkness, gleaming like an aroused cat's.
“I something have for you.” She rose from his single bed, fumbled in her handbag. He admired her soft curves in the moonlight filtering in from his front windows. Then she was back straddling him naked as she dangled a chain in his face.
“What's this?”
“A loc-ket.”
“For a girl?”
“No. You wear eet, round neck. Or keep eet, under thees pillow.” She took the filigreed silver oval and snapped open its hinged case. She leaned forward, her bare breasts distracting him as she put a small photograph in front of his eyes. “Pictures we made. I pay for small one, to fit. See?”
Gillom squinted. He could just make out her long hair and features.
“Very pretty. Looks like you. I
will
wear it. Always.”
Anel then lifted her left hand to show him thin strands of silky, curly hair she'd tied with a pink ribbon. “Is from here.” She patted the triangle between her legs.
Gillom was flabbergasted. “Your muff hair?”
He could almost see her blush in the dark. “
SÃ
. I know dancer did this. Mean I be faithful. Only to
you
.”
“Ohhh, Anel. That's beautiful.”
“
SÃ
. No matters who I dance with, only
you
I let in me, in my heart.”
He pulled her down for a long, tongue-sucking kiss. She eased his manhood back in and then, braced up on her knees, took her sweet time, rocking back and forth atop him, moaning like a contented puppy, until their passion passed.
Â
Thirty-one
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After work at the bank the next day, Gillom hit the Bonanza just as his pal was finishing up his day shift. Ease pulled them two drafts and they sat at its long oak bar.
“Goose is bothering her, Ease, least once or twice a week, trying to get her to go up to Clifton, work in his brothel,” Gillom peeved. “She thinks it's just a saloon.”
“Well, she has to drink tea with all kinds of customers, bad men even, to make a living in that dance hall.”
“I know, but Anel says he's become more bothersome, trying to get her to go upstairs at the Red Light.”
“Can't she tell the manager there?”
“She did, but the owner doesn't want to bother Luther. He spends too much money.”
“Huh.” The young barkeep turned to another customer. “Hey, Mickey! You ever work the mines up in Clifton?”
A wiry Welshman down the bar nodded. “Certainly did. Phelps Dodge pays better down here, though, and Bisbee's mines are better run, safer.”
“Uh-huh. You ever frequent a joint up there called the Blue Goose?”
“Yep. Snootiest saloon in eastern Arizona.”
“Was it a whorehouse, too?”
The roughneck rubbed his chin stubble, remembering. “Yes, it was. Upstairs. Never ascended to those heavenly chambers, though. Too expensive.”
“See?” Gillom nudged his pal. “He wants to turn Anel into a painted cat, pimp her.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Warn him off. Like he did me, when his sidekick caught me in the men's room at the Orpheum. This time I'll have my guns on and it'll be public. No sneak attacks.”
Young Bixler looked worried. “Ummm. Trouble. Bad for our business.”
“Not in here, Ease. Luther won't be back in the Bonanza after he braced your faro dealer for cheating, remember?” Gillom was aggravated. “I just need your support. Like I backed you when that footpad attacked us.”
“Yeah, yeah, all right. I don't want any shooting, but I better borrow a
pistola,
just in case. I don't wrestle any better than you can.”
They clapped each other on the shoulders and Ease went off to borrow a sidearm for the evening.
Soon Bixler carried a '78 Colt Frontier .45 double-action revolver in the side pocket of his black cotton coat as the boys stepped onto the boardwalk heading up into the netherworld of upper Brewery Gulch. A warm dusk was gathering along with a crowd of miners just coming off the day shift in the Copper Queen or Irish Mag shafts. The boys scouted the St. Louis Beer Hall with no luck. Ease had heard Luther Goose was still in town and he was a known high roller, so they decided to stalk him in Bisbee's best saloons, where there was slightly less chance of gunplay.
Their second stop, the Senate, they hit pay dirt. The Senate was Bisbee's fanciest restaurant, which offered wild game along with regular beef and chicken dishes, served on silver platters by white-jacketed waiters. The brothel owner from Clifton idled at the back bar, hoisting whiskeys with William and a couple other hard cases in coarse wool suits. Mr. Goose, anticipating further trouble, had beefed up his protection.
William spied Gillom and Ease stalking through the front barroom, peering about at the customers dining.
“It's that pissant kid and his pal, boss.”
Gillom halted fifteen yards away from the smaller bar in the Senate's back room, where few were dining midweek that warm early summer evening. In the bar's mirror, Luther Goose watched Gillom drop into his gunfighter's stance, feet apart, long fingers dangling at his sides. His work coat was pushed back behind two gleaming gun handles, butts forward, leaving them ready for fast work. Luther's henchmen put down their whiskeys, leaving their own hands free.
“If it isn't the kid gunslinger.”
“Mister Goose, you've been bothering my friend at work. I want you to leave her alone.”
“Who might that be?”
“Anel Romero. Works the Red Light.”
The hefty gambler finally put down his tumbler, turned slowly round to face his accuser. He saw Ease's right hand fingering his coat pocket.
“She's a saloon girl. Belongs to anybody with a dollar for a dance.”
“No, she's
my
girlfriend! She dances with anybody she chooses to. And that's no longer gonna be you, since you're constantly bothering her. Anel doesn't wish to see you again, here, or in Clifton, or anywheres else.”
Luther's mouth twitched upward into a false smile. “She needs to tell me that herself.”
“
I'm
telling you. Right here, right now.” Gillom saw that Luther's three henchmen had slumped into partial crouches, ready to spring. His were the only guns on display, though.
“Kid, you ever grow up, you'll see she's just two tits, a hole, and a heartbeat, like all the rest of those dance hall whores.”
“Not
my
sweetheart.”
The big gambler started rubbing his mole over his right eyebrow with an index finger, a nervous tick. At frantic waves from the bartender behind the short counter, the saloon's owner came striding up.
“Gentlemen. No trouble here?”
Luther was gruff. “No. He's spoken his stupid piece.”
The restaurateur was curt, sensing the threat. “Good. Because if there is a disagreement, please take it outside or the sheriff will be called. The Senate's a fine dining establishment, as I'm sure you're aware, Mister Goose, owning a saloon yourself.”
Luther nodded, his eyes not straying from Gillom's gun hands. “It used to be.”
Ease tapped his buddy in the arm, breaking Gillom's glare, and the boys backed off. As they were walking slowly back through the now quiet front room, the big man from Clifton got in a final jab. “Walk careful, sonny. I
will
see you around!”
The young men passed out the Senate's front door, trailed by the owner to see that they did, and watched by the now silent diners in that restaurant.
In the back bar, Luther Goose gathered his men close.